Introduction

Welcome to the network TAMSK server. TAMSK is the second game in Kris Burm's wholly remarkable
Project GIPF series. The actual board game is played with egg-timers
as playing pieces, and succeeds in using time as a strategic element of the game. Wow!

Any e-mail version is of necessity a pale imitation of the original, but I have attempted to capture
the strategic elements - if not the excitement - of the board game.

The challenge command is described below. Other commands are the same for all pbmserv games.

tamsk challenge userid1 userid2starts a game of TAMSK between userid1 and userid2.

Rules

Set-up

Each player has 3 timers, labelled ABC and XYZ for no particularly good reason, and 32 discs.

Objective

Moving

Each space can contain a certain number of rings (the numbers on the
board show the spare capacity); once a space is full, you can't move
there any more.

On your first three turns, you must move each of your timers once; so
after three turns, the sand is running in each timer.
After that point, if any timer runs out of sand then it is dead: it cannot move again, and
permanently blocks the space it is in.

The 15-second timer

In addition to the pieces, there is a 15-second timer to prevent your opponent from
sitting and waiting until you run out of sand in all your timers. You start the timer
in the opponent's turn, and he must move before it runs out of sand.

Confusion warning:
You can't turn the 15-second timer over until it is empty, so if you move faster than your
maximum allotted time, you give extra time to your opponent, hence each
move must be made in between 15 and 30 seconds, depending on how quickly
your opponent moves. A few examples:

You have 15 seconds to make your move; you move in 10 seconds.
There are 5 seconds remaining before the sand runs out so you can start the timer
in your opponent's turn. Your opponent gets 5 + 15 = 20 seconds to make his move.

You have 20 seconds to make your move; you move in 1 second. We assume that your
opponent had just started the timer at the end of your turn; he gets 15s + 15s = 30 seconds.

You have 15 seconds to make your move; you move in 15 seconds.
Your opponent gets 15 seconds too.

Notation

Each board location is denoted by a column letter (a-g), and height (1-7). A move is in the form: